Silence & Sound
by SharpestSatire
Summary: …the absence of word and sound is something else entirely. (Loki is trapped in a prison of his own making.) Post-Avengers.


**This is absolutely post-Avengers with Thor 2 spoilers. Read no further if you don't want any. (And by spoilers, I mean suspected popular spoiler that Frigga dies for example.)**

**This fic assumes he was put in a cell straight after arriving in Asgard from leaving New York with Thor. It also builds on the assumption he didn't get a trial. Although judging by some gifs/video snippets on tumblr it looks like he did. **

**This fic is dedicated to timelordanon on tumblr, who basically inspired this. (And read it and added bits here or there to make it [more] angst-y and helped with the summary and was generally cool and awesome. Major props to her. Thank you, timelordanon!) Go check out her tumblr. I'm also on tumblr as sharpestsatire, so feel free to swamp me in asks or whatnot. :)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own this. Obviously. *drawls like Snape***

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He comes back, muzzled like a dog and cuffed like the greatest of criminals. He supposes they find it suiting, but he finds it _merciful_. He remembers chains and screams and unmakings while with Thanos.

It itches at him.

He failed. He _should _be punished.

He failed one master and he has failed in his family's eyes.

(He has always failed in his family's eyes. But now even Frigga turns away.)

There is no trial, of course. For all their talk of brothers and family ties and _we can stop this together_, there is no trial for this fallen prince. Because he did not fall in love or prove his worthiness to a magical artifact, but because he had tried to take over and destroy another race, he does not stand before Odin. He sees Odin at a distance. He sees him turn away and leave and Loki flinches after all this time and all this trying to prove his worth—

(Still worthless. Once as a prince, now as a criminal. And really, was there any difference? The difference now was that they truly _notice _him. Just not in the way he wants.)

Thor leaves him with two well-armored guards. Frigga leaves the room quickly after without a word. And he is taken to his cell.

It is a princely cell. Well furnished. Well lit. Even with a mirror, as if he would need to prepare himself for visitors. Though underground with no sunlight, it is more humane than other cells. (This he thinks at first.) He finds bitter humor in it.

_Still keeping on masks, Odinson? Still pretending to care?_

Poison dripping into his eyes would be more fitting a punishment. But perhaps Odin sees too many parallels to Thor's own actions that caused Thor's banishment, and does not wish to appear anything but wise (not hypocritical) to the people of Asgard.

These are Loki's first thoughts.

The descent takes… time. Days. Weeks. Months.

Thor comes by once but leaves quickly and doesn't say a word. He thinks he hears Frigga visit but he is half asleep at the time and, even as he jerks awake quickly, she is gone if she was ever there.

The irony is that he designed this cell. He knew exactly what he was doing when he did. He is called silvertongue for a reason, with power not over just magic and space and time, but over words. Words are an entirely different power. You can break someone without touching them, slowly drive them insane, make them fall in love.

(Have your brother banished, tear your family apart, wreak havoc on a world not your own.)

But the absence of word and sound is something else entirely.

The cell is sound proof.

Utterly, desolately quiet.

There is no gurgling of pipes, like on his brief but chaotic visit to Midgard. There is no sound when his food appears. No tap of feet on the stone ground when guards walk by. Even the sound of his fork on the plate or taking a sip of his water is muted.

But… it starts to sound loud in his head, each sound. Magnified. Actions that cause sounds, like getting food onto his fork, start to make loud noises in his head until he picks at his food or doesn't touch it at all. Thoughts press on the walls of his brain until he feels like tearing his hair out. He can't move some days because of it.

The books don't help. He can read for only so long until each rustle of a page turn cuts up his insides and drives him to throw the book against the wall.

(The thud against the window is like a hammer slam inside his head that pounds out the almost gibberish like words that are his thoughts.)

The only coherent thought is that this is deserved. (This is his natural state.) To be alone is fine. To deal with himself is torture he deserves. It is fitting, too fitting, that he designed this room for their enemies.

(Is that what he is now? An enemy of Asgard?)

(_"I only ever wanted to be your equal!"_)

And so the days blur into magnified sounds and _thoughts that won't stop they won't stop I don't deserve help but I want it stop—_

There is one clear impression in that time. When he can no longer look at his mirror—_silence and soundless just like him_—he breaks it, the only sound the brief shattering and his harsh breath. Because maybe that will stop the screaming in his head, the flashes of blue, Thanos's voice, the endless begging for death both then and now and he's falling and falling and—

He remembers cool hands, the scent of Frigga, brief flashes of color through half closed lids and glazed eyes. These memories, imagined or not, are the only things that calm him, slow the voices in his head.

When he awakes, he's still in his cell. But the shattered mirror frame and glass shards are gone. His hands and wrists are bandaged.

And he sits for a while, bitterly hating himself for even trying to end it again because how dare he? How dare he when he's not worth death? Death that would hopefully bring peace? No, he doesn't deserve that. He deserves this silence and sound. Silence and sound driving him mad. Because both are here and not at all _and the voices wouldn't stop_—

(_"Is not this simpler? Is not this your natural state?"_)

He does not eat much and he does not speak. (Who is there to speak to?) And because of this he wastes away, words locked and shriveled inside.

But he is cared for on some level. No matter how little he eats, he feels Frigga's magic nourishing him even if he can't see her. (_Mother, no, let me die_. _Please, Amma, please._) He feels Thor, respectfully and carefully, care for his unkempt hair and dirty skin when he's too weak.

He knows he looks presentable on the outside, perhaps even calm.

(The inside is a different matter entirely.)

He sometimes even walks around the cell, counting the steps and letting the sound fill his head, loud and clamorous. It is steady, his walk, so for a while the voices are muted somewhat and he can count the time of his steps and his heart.

And then…

Thanos carries through. If he was an outsider to the events that follow, he would've admired Thanos's tactics against them and particularly his failed servant. Thanos does not use forces like the Chitauri to make grand statements of war. He does not need to.

He strikes the heart. The part a war mongering nation like Asgard—who admit they are such or not—is blind to until it is pointed out. Psychological warfare.

(_"You will have your war, Asgardian. If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he cannot find you."_)

She dies fighting, he knows.

(_"You think you know pain?"_)

She shouldn't have died at all.

(_"He will make you long for something as sweet as pain."_)

He blames Frigga's death on himself.

And the Other had been right about it being more than pain. Yet more blood is in his ledger. Responsible for death for all those around him, all while trying to earn love.

(If love is for children, what is _he_ that he is so desperate for it?)

He breaks in two, splinters into pieces of something that was never whole to begin with. His room becomes wrecked, even though he doesn't remember doing so. His grief is so strong it drives him to see nothing, do nothing but try to tear apart his _cell if he had been free perhaps he could've stopped it and maybe Frigga would—_

When his vision clears, he sees broken pottery, splinters of wood, bent metal, and torn paper on the ground. His throat feels sore when he swallows, as if he had been screaming. His feet are bloody and his hands are empty and his room is in bits and Frigga is _still gone. _She is _gone_. And Loki is alone. He is drained of all emotion, literally feels nothing.

His thoughts are utterly still, bereft of meaning. It is a kind of numbness that has no sound or word. A grief too deep. He does not eat or sleep or move. He remains collapsed against a wall in his cell, blood drying on his bare feet, unkempt. How is it possible that he can still hurt? He has no heart, no right to feel hurt over her death when he did not love as he should've.

He feels so much that he doesn't feel at all.

_It is all your fault._

_Why do you grieve? _

_What did you expect?_

_What did you expect from a monster?_

And then…

Thor enters the dungeons with no subtlety. He comes right up to the cell and _sound rushes in sound so loud he would've screamed if he had enough energy or thought but nothing mattered anymore—_

Thor comes up to his cell and says, "I know you seek vengeance as much as I do. Help me escape Asgard and I will grant it to you: vengeance. And afterward this cell."

And Loki, for the first time since all of this began, since Thor's banishment so many ages ago, feels an odd kind of peace come upon on him. The rest of their conversation barely computes, only distantly does he scramble up responses. His mind is far away.

Frigga's death will not go by in silence. The monsters that killed her will die for their deed.

And to find hiding monsters, to figure out their full plan, you must think like a monster.

He would avenge Frigga with no trouble. For what is better to hunt monsters than a monster?

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**I hope you enjoyed! Who knows how accurate it will be by the time the movie comes out. *heaves sigh***

**This idea stemmed from talking to timelordanon and reading some of her writing, I think. Basically, what if the cell he was in is completely sound proof? Google "the quietest place on earth" and there should be an article** **about it.**

**EDIT: A question that was asked about this story: "So in this story, it is Thanos who attacks Asgard? Or is it that Thanos is controlling Malekith and the dark elves?" The answer: I wrote this story before I saw Thor 2, but I think I worked under the assumption that the dark elves and Malekith worked for Thanos, somewhat like how Thanos used the Chitauri and/or teamed up with them (or used them or what have you). I didn't think out all the details for this fic, to be honest.**

**Stay cool.**

**-SS**


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